"I am sorry for crossed postings"
Dear Urban Mobility Professional,
As you are aware we have started an electronic magazine: The Urban Mobility
Professional (UMP). The first issue of this magazine discussed the Y2K
problem and has been send to our users at the end of May
(http://www.mobility-net.com/ump/issue1.htm). We have had a lot of positive
reactions from our members and we were very impressed by the interest shown
by our urban mobility professionals.
The second issue of the magazine will discuss information regarding the
EURO. Again I would like to ask you as an Urban Mobility professional if you
are interested to publish your views/information regarding the EURO in the
upcoming issue of The Urban Mobility Professional. Documents received will
be listed in The UMP and/or added to the Urban Mobility Library.
You can send the information/articles by e-mail to
C.Kerckhoffs@mobility-net.
I am looking forward to publish your information in our second issue of our
magazine.
Best regards,
Cindy Kerckhoffs
Editor / Information Manager
Urban Mobility Network
P.s. I welcome any requests concerning future issues/topics.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe yourself to our FREE electronic magazine:
http://www.mobility-net.com/ump
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998
From: Keri Monihan <kmonihan(a)ccmc.org>
Following is the copy from the most recent Census 2000 News
Alert - If you have any problems with the transmission,
please call me at 202/326-8728.
Federal Court Hears Arguments In Gingrich Lawsuit Against
Census Sampling
A three-judge U.S. District Court panel heard oral arguments
today before a packed courtroom in the case filed by House
Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) challenging the
constitutionality and legality of sampling in the census.
District of Columbia Circuit Court Judge Douglas Ginsburg
was joined by District Court Judges Royce C. Lamberth and
Ricardo Urbina in presiding over U.S. House of
Representatives v. U.S. Department of Commerce, the first of
two lawsuits asserting that the Constitution and the Census
Act (Title 13, United States Code) prohibit sampling in the
census.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) argued the case for the
Commerce Department, first suggesting that the House did not
have standing to bring the lawsuit because the current
Congress (105th) would not be harmed by a census taken in
2000 and that the case was not ripe for judicial
consideration because the House could still direct census
methods through legislation. Judge Lamberth appeared
skeptical of those arguments, pointing out that if the
controversy over sampling was not settled soon, the decision
on which methods to use would be irreversible and any
potential harm to the plaintiffs caused by sampling was
therefore inevitable if the Census Bureau proceeded with its
plan. Lawyers for the House argued that Congress and the
Administration had reached an impasse on the question of
whether sampling can be used in the census, making it
necessary for the courts to step in, an argument that Judge
Lamberth appeared to embrace. Plaintiff's lawyers noted
that the Bureau and the General Accounting Office believed
that a decision on the census design should be made very
soon.
Both sides also presented their arguments on the
constitutionality and legality of sampling methods. The
government said that the Constitution contemplates the most
accurate census possible, while the House's lawyers argued
that the term "enumeration" in Article I, section 2, meant
to count one by one, not to estimate. Judges Ginsburg and
Lamberth seemed most concerned with plaintiff's suggestion
that sampling methods are open to political manipulation.
The government noted in response that traditional counting
methods also can be manipulated to achieve a certain
outcome.
Plaintiff's lawyers also argued that the Census Act does not
allow sampling to produce the census counts used to
apportion the House of Representatives. They pointed to
section 195 of the Census Act, which states that except for
purposes of apportionment, the Census Bureau "shall" use
sampling methods whenever possible. The government's
attorney's countered that section 141 of the Act authorizes
the Secretary of Commerce to determine how the census will
be taken, including the use of sampling. They suggested
that when Congress amended both sections in 1976, it
intended to encourage the use of sampling whenever possible
in data collection activities but leave the decision on
whether to use sampling in the decennial census to the
Secretary. The court also heard brief arguments in support
of the government's position from intervening parties: the
City of Los Angeles on behalf of 19 other cities, counties,
and states, and 19 Members of Congress; House Minority
Leader Richard Gephardt and several other Democratic
representatives; a coalition of Asian American and Hispanic
civic organizations; and the California State Legislature.
In a written statement, House census subcommittee Chairman
Dan Miller (R-FL), referring to arguments that the case was
not ready for judicial intervention, said he was troubled
that "the President is using taxpayer money to pay
government lawyers to try to get the case dismissed." Rep.
Miller asked: "Is he [the President] afraid that sampling
will be found unconstitutional?" The lawsuit filed by the
House of Representatives, at the direction of Speaker
Gingrich, as well as the outside law firm hired to argue the
case, are also being paid for with taxpayer funds. The
government argued the merits of the case as well as pursuing
arguments on whether the Constitution permits this type of
case to be heard. Also in a written statement, Citizens for
an Honest Count Coalition, a group of conservative
organizations opposed to sampling, urged the court to rule
quickly "before billions of dollars are wasted on a phony
census."
In an audio press conference yesterday hosted by the Census
2000 Initiative, constitutional scholar and Harvard law
professor Laurence Tribe said that neither the Constitution
nor the law prohibited sampling. Calling the lawsuit one of
"the Emperor has no clothes," Prof. Tribe said that it
wouldn't make sense for the framers of the Constitution to
say the Congress should direct how the census will be taken
and then limit those methods. Article I, section 2, says in
relevant part that "the actual Enumeration shall be made
[every ten years] in such Manner as they [Congress] shall by
Law direct." University of Wisconsin history professor Margo
Anderson, author of "The American Census," said that the
Founding Fathers sought a way to depoliticize the process of
allocating seats in Congress among the states and settled on
a measurement of the population, but that they had not
discussions about the methods for doing so.
The other lawsuit, Glavin v. Clinton, will be heard by a
three-judge panel in the Eastern District of Virginia
(Alexandria) later this summer. In the Census Bureau's
funding bill for this year, Congress directed that the
courts expedite consideration of the cases, with any appeal
going directly to the Supreme Court.
HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: The Census 2000 Initiative Web site is
nearing completion. Please forward any suggestions for
hyper-links you think should be included to: Henry Griggs at
hgriggs(a)ccmc.org.
Questions about the information contained in this News Alert
may be directed to TerriAnn Lowenthal at (202) 434-8756 or,
by e-mail, at <terriann2k(a)aol.com>. Please feel free to
circulate this information to colleagues and other
interested individuals.
this report, "2000 Census: Preparations for Dress Rehearsal
Leave Many Unanswered
Questions (Chapter Report, 03/26/98, GAO/GGD-98-74)" has
been out since March but i just got an opportunity to read
it.
http://www.gao.gov/monthly.list/march/mar9810.htm
----------- Sorry for crossed
essages --------------
Dear Urban Mobility Professional,
As you are aware I have been doing research regarding the Y2K problem in
relation to the mobility branch. In the Urban Mobility professional (UMP:
http://www.mobility-net.com/ump/issue1.htm) I already mentioned that so far
little attention has been given to the Y2K problem in relation to Urban
Mobility which means that a lot of companies/organizations are not Year 2000
compliant.
The articles published in the UMP confirm this statement. For example the
article written by Martyn Emery about the study on the infrastructure
robustness of the Greater London Area in the context of the Year 2000
Computing Crisis, in which he concluded that the Greater London Area scored
a 49 out of 100 in their scale for Year 2000 readiness.
It is therefore that I explicitly ask you as being an Urban Mobility
Professional, to subscribe and participate in the Y2K Forum-discussion
(http://www.mobility-net.com/forum/) (NEW: Mailinglist functionality
included) and maybe contradict the fears Mr Martin Bangemann told a news
conference:
A lot of people don't seem to be worrying their pretty heads about it"
(2000-problem), .
(Reuters, February 25, 1998).
I am looking forward to see your reactions.
Cindy Kerckhoffs
The following is the full text of an article on Census 2000 Sampling
from the July 1998 issue of Scientific American.
**************************************************************
http://www.sciam.com:80/1998/0798issue/0798infocus.html
**************************************************************
Statistical Uncertainty
Researchers warn that continued debate over the 2000 census could
doom it to failure
Censuses in the U.S. have always seemed straightforward_it's just a
head count, right?_and have always proved, in practice, to be just
the opposite: logistically complex, politically contentious and
statistically inaccurate. Clerks were still tabulating the results of
the 1880 census eight years later. The 1920 count revealed such a
dramatic shift in population from farms to cities that Congress
refused to honor the results. And a mistake in doling out electoral
college seats based on the 1870 census handed Rutherford B. Hayes the
presidency when Samuel J. Tilden should in fact have been awarded the
most votes.
But after 1940 the accuracy of the census at least improved each
decade, so that only 1.2 percent of the population slipped past the
enumerators in 1980, according to an independent demographic
analysis. That trend toward increasing accuracy reversed in 1990,
however. The Census Bureau paid 25 percent more per home to count
people than it had in 1980, and its hundreds of thousands of workers
made repeated attempts to collect information on every person in every
house_what is called a full enumeration. Nevertheless, the number of
residents left off the rolls for their neighborhood rose to 15
million, while 11 million were counted where they should not have
been. The net undercount of four million amounted to 1.8 percent of
the populace.
Less than 2 percent might be an acceptable margin of error were it
not that some groups of people were missed more than others. A
quality-check survey found that blacks, for example, were
undercounted by 4.4 percent; rural renters, by 5.9 percent. Because
census data are put to so many important uses_from redrawing voting
districts and siting schools to distributing congressional seats and
divvying up some $150 billion in annual federal spending_all agree
that this is a problem.
In response, Congress unanimously passed a bill in 1991 commissioning
the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to study ways to reduce cost
and error in the census. The expert panel arrived at an unequivocal
conclusion: the only way to reduce the undercount of all racial
groups to acceptable levels at an acceptable cost is to introduce
scientific sampling into the April 1, 2000, census and to give up the
goal of accounting directly for every individual. Other expert groups,
including a special Department of Commerce task force, two other NAS
panels, the General Accounting Office and both statisticians' and
sociologists' professional societies, have since added their strong
endorsement of a census that incorporates random sampling of some
kind.
After some waffling, the Census Bureau finally settled last year on a
plan to use two kinds of surveys. The first will begin after most
people have mailed back the census forms sent to every household.
Simulations predict that perhaps one third of the population will
neglect to fill out a form_more in some census tracts (clusters of
adjacent blocks, housing 2,000 to 7,000 people) than in others, of
course. To calculate the remainder of the population, census workers
will visit enough randomly selected homes to ensure that at least 90
percent of the households in each tract are accounted for directly.
So if only 600 out of 1,000 homes in a given tract fill out forms,
enumerators will knock on the doors of random nonrespondents until
they add another 300 to the tally. The number of denizens in the
remaining 100 houses can then be determined by extrapolation,
explains Howard R. Hogan, who leads the statistical design of the
census.
After the initial count is nearly complete, a second wave of census
takers will fan out across the country to conduct a much smaller
quality-control survey of 750,000 homes. Armed with a more meticulous
(and much more expensive) list of addresses than the census used,
this so-called integrated coverage measurement (ICM) will be used to
gauge how many people in each socioeconomic strata were overcounted
or undercounted in the first stage. The results will be used to
inflate or deflate the counts for each group in order to arrive at
final census figures that are closer to the true population in each
region.
"We endorsed the use of sampling [in the first stage] for two
reasons," reports James Trussell, director of population research at
Princeton University and a member of two NAS panels on the census.
"It saves money, and it at least offers the potential for increased
accuracy, because you could use a smaller, much better trained force
of enumerators." The Census Bureau puts the cost of the recommended,
statistics-based plan at about $4 billion. A traditional full
enumeration, it estimates, would cost up to $800 million more.
The ICM survey is important, says Alan M. Zaslavsky, a statistician
at Harvard Medical School, because it will reduce the lopsided
undercounting of certain minorities. "If we did a traditional
enumeration," he comments, "then we would in effect be saying one
more time that it is okay to undercount blacks by 3 or 4
percent_we've done it in the past, and we'll do it again."
Republican leaders in Congress do not like the answers given by such
experts. Two representatives and their advocates, including House
Speaker Newt Gingrich, filed suits to force the census takers to
attempt to enumerate everyone. Oral arguments in one trial were set
for June; the cases may not be decided until 1999.
The Republicans' main concern, explains Liz Podhoretz, an aide to the
House subcommittee on the census, is "that the ICM is five times
bigger than the [quality-check survey performed] in 1990, and they
plan to do it in half the time with less qualified people. And it
disturbs them that statisticians could delete a person's census data"
to adjust for overcounted socioeconomic groups.
Although the great majority of researchers support the new census
plan, there are several well-respected dissenters. "I think the 2000
design is going to have more error than the 1990 design," says David
A. Freedman of the University of California at Berkeley. The errors
to worry about, he argues, are not the well-understood errors
introduced by sampling but systematic mistakes made in collecting and
processing the data.
As an example, Freedman points out that a computer coding error made
in the quality check during the last census would have erased one
million people from the country and erroneously moved a congressional
seat from Pennsylvania to Arizona had the survey data been used to
correct the census. That mistake was not caught until after the
results were presented to Congress. "Small mistakes can have large
effects on total counts," adds Kenneth W. Wachter, another Berkeley
statistician.
"There are ways to improve the accuracy without sampling," Podhoretz
asserts. "Simplifying the form and offering it in several languages,
as is planned, should help. They should use [presumably more
familiar] postal workers as enumerators. They should use
administrative records, such as welfare rolls."
"That shows appalling ignorance," Trussell retorts. "Our first report
addressed that argument head-on and concluded that you cannot get
there by doing it the old way. You're just wasting a lot of money."
Representative Dan Miller of Florida was planning to introduce a bill
in June that would make it illegal to delete any nonduplicated census
form from the count. Such a restriction would derail the census,
Trussell warns. "The idea behind sampling is not to eliminate anybody
but to arrive at the best estimate of what the actual population is.
Surely the goal is not just to count as many people as possible?"
As the debate drags on, the brinkmanship is making statisticians
nervous. Podhoretz predicts that "some kind of a showdown is likely
next spring." That may be too late. "You don't want to redesign a
census at the last minute," Freedman says.
"I think the two sides should just agree to flip a coin," Trussell
says. "To think next year about what we're going to do is madness."
Wachter concurs: "We must not let the battle over sampling methods
destroy the whole census." Otherwise April 1, 2000, may make all
involved look like April fools.
--W. Wayt Gibbs in San Francisco
****************************************************************
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 12:29:33 -0400
From: Keri Monihan <kmonihan(a)ccmc.org>
June 8, 1998
NEWS ALERT
Census Monitoring Board Sets Ground Rules, Divides Money, In
Effort To Establish Bipartisan Role
Sampling Opponents Criticize President's Houston Census
Event
The Census Monitoring Board, established in a funding bill
last fall as part of the so-called compromise agreement over
the use of sampling in the census, held its first meeting on
June 3 in a House of Representatives meeting room. All
eight Board members gave brief opening remarks, with some
suggesting that they were skeptical of the Census Bureau's
plan to supplement traditional counting methods with
statistical sampling and others stating that the census
could not be improved without adding new methods.
The Board discussed administrative matters for most of the
session, deciding how to divvy up its annual $4 million
budget, hire staff, and keep track of spending. Board
members agreed to set aside $1 million for joint
professional staff and projects, with the remaining funds
divided equally between the President's appointees and those
appointed by the Republican congressional leadership. They
put off adopting rules for how the joint funds would be
spent but agreed in principle that all members would keep
the Board informed about the substance and purpose of
projects undertaken independently by either side.
The Board also adopted a recommendation by Republican
co-chair Kenneth Blackwell to let the Government Printing
Office (GPO) handle the Board's accounting after agreeing
to a request by Democratic co-chair Tony Coelho that
information about expenditures be subject to the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA). (As an agency of the Legislative
Branch, GPO is not subject to FOIA by law. The law creating
the Board had designated the General Services Administration
as the fiscal agent; GSA is subject to FOIA.) Board members
were sworn in as official Census Bureau employees, giving
them access to confidential information collected by the
Bureau.
In his opening remarks, Mr. Blackwell said that he had tried
to meet with Acting Census Bureau Director James Holmes
earlier that day but had been rebuffed. Mr. Blackwell said
the encounter did not bode well for establishing a
cooperative relationship with the Bureau.
Presidentially-appointed Board member Everett Ehrlich
responded that Mr. Holmes had received the meeting request
only two days before and had tried to notify Mr. Blackwell
that he could not be available due to previous commitments.
The Board has set July 8 as the tentative date for its next
meeting. Future meetings will be announced in the Federal
Register and open to the public unless the Board votes to
close the meeting.
Administration activities: President Clinton made his first
extended public comments about the 2000 census on June 2,
visiting the Magnolia Multi-Service Center WIC facility in
Houston, TX, and participating in a roundtable discussion
with local civic, elected and religious leaders. Roundtable
participants discussed the importance of an accurate census
to transportation, housing, health and child care, rural
development, education, and other policies and programs.
Commerce Deputy Secretary Robert Mallett, Rep. Carolyn
Maloney (D-NY), co-chair of the congressional census caucus,
and Rep. Tom Sawyer (D-OH), former chairman of the House
census oversight subcommittee, accompanied the President to
Houston.
The President said he wanted "[to] put a human face on the
census and its consequences" and that "an inaccurate census
distorts our understanding of the needs of our people [and]
diminishes the quality of life not only for them, but for
all the rest of us as well." He said the Census Bureau must
use "the most up-to-date, scientific, cost-effective
methods" to take an accurate census. "This is not a
political issue, this is an American issue," Clinton said,
noting that it was "unfortunate" that some in Congress
oppose the use of sampling to count the population. The
President acknowledged the difficulty in explaining why
sampling can help produce a more accurate count to the
general public.
Rep. Dan Miller (R-FL), chairman of the House Subcommittee
on the Census, and Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), head of the
House Republican Conference, both issued written statements
in response to the President's Houston remarks. Rep. Miller
accused the President of "peddling statistical snake-oil."
"We've heard enough of his 'political' science. Where is
the 'empirical' science?" Rep. Miller asked. Rep. Boehner
also charged the President with politicizing the census and
said that sampling "corrupts a basic sense of fairness by
treating people as numbers that can be estimated, rather
than individuals who have a right to be counted."
Race and ethnicity update: The Census Bureau's Advisory
Committees held a joint meeting on June 3 to discuss the
development of guidelines for tabulating multiple responses
to the race question in the 2000 census and other Federal
data collection activities. Census Bureau staff presented
several guideline options, noting that there were 63
possible combinations of reporting responses to the race
question, including the six individual categories
established by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Tabulation options include "collapsing" the information into
fewer categories for some combinations; reassigning multiple
responses, either randomly or according to predetermined
"priorities," to the original, individual categories; and
reporting all combinations with each race identified in the
combination, producing totals that exceed 100 percent.
Advisory Committee participants raised several issues for
further consideration and research, including maintaining
the comparability of data over time, identification of
households (as opposed to individuals) by race, and
protecting confidentiality at the smaller geographic levels,
particularly when demographic or economic characteristics
are tabulated by race. An example of the latter problem
would be reporting the number of households identified as
Black/Asian/White with incomes under $25,000 for a group of
census blocks; the incidence of these combined
characteristics may be too small to protect the privacy of
respondents.
Only 15 racial categories will be reported for this year's
Census Dress Rehearsal while the Bureau and a Federal
interagency task force continue their research. OMB expects
to publish final tabulation guidelines by next winter.
Legal update: A three-judge panel of the U.S. District
Court for the District of Columbia will hear oral arguments
in the case of U.S. House of Representatives v. U.S.
Department of Commerce on Thursday, June 11, beginning at
10:00 a.m. The Federal courthouse is located at 3rd Street
and Constitution Avenue, N.W. Los Angeles City Attorney
James Hahn and several other parties that have joined the
lawsuit in support of the Census Bureau's 2000 census plan
will hold a press conference at 9:30 a.m. on the steps of
the courthouse to discuss the key issues in the case, which
centers around the constitutionality of using sampling in
the census.
Census preparations: The Census Bureau has chosen its sites
for the data capture centers, where millions of
questionnaires will be processed during the 2000 census.
The sites are Baltimore County, MD; Pamona, CA; and Phoenix,
CA. Census forms will also be processed at the Bureau's
permanent data capture facility in Jeffersonville, IN. The
facilities will be built and operated by TRW, which was
awarded the contract earlier this year. TRW also will
recruit and train temporary workers to staff the facilities.
Stakeholder activities: The 2000 Census Advisory Committee
to the Secretary of Commerce will hold its quarterly meeting
on June 11 - 12, at the Francis Amasa Walker Conference
Center, Bureau of the Census, 4700 Silver Hill Road,
Suitland, MD, beginning at 8:45 a.m. each day.
Questions about the information contained in this News Alert
may be directed to TerriAnn Lowenthal at (202) 434-8756 or,
by e-mail, at <terriann2k(a)aol.com>. Please feel free to
circulate this information to colleagues and other
interested individuals.
Subject: Census 2000 News Alert
Date: Mon, 1 Jun 1998 14:50:50 -0400
From: Keri Monihan <kmonihan(a)ccmc.org>
Following is the copy from the most recent Census 2000 News
Alert. If you have any problems, please call me at
202/326-8728.
June 1, 1998
NEWS ALERT
D.C. Court Lets Los Angeles, Other Cities Join Census
Lawsuit
Census Monitoring Board Set To Meet
A federal court has ruled that the City of Los Angeles, 19
other states, cities, and counties, and 19 Members of
Congress may officially join the lawsuit brought by House
Speaker Newt Gingrich to prevent the use of sampling in the
2000 census. Los Angeles had sought to intervene in U.S.
House of Representatives v. U.S. Department of Commerce in
support of the Census Bureau's 2000 census plan. As
"intervenor-defendants," Los Angeles and the other
stakeholder parties argue that the
Constitution contemplates an accurate census, not a
particular method for achieving the population count. Oral
arguments before a special three-judge panel of the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia will be heard on
June 11, beginning at 10:00 a.m.
Census Monitoring Board update: The Census Monitoring
Board, established in the Census Bureau's current year
funding bill, will hold its first meeting on Wednesday, June
3, at 2:00 p.m., in Room 2203 Rayburn House Office
Building. The meeting is open to the public.
Funding update: House appropriators are ready to start
drafting the 13 funding bills that will keep Federal
agencies running in Fiscal Year 1999 (FY99), which begins on
October 1. Before heading home for the Memorial Day break,
the Committee on Appropriations divided up $532.8 billion in
discretionary funds that will be available for Federal
programs next year. The Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice,
State, and The Judiciary and Related Agencies, which covers
the Census Bureau, received $32.34 billion, almost $200
million more than its counterpart Senate panel but still
$1.04 billion less than the Administration requested. The
Senate subcommittee will divide $32.16 billion among the
diverse programs in the Departments of Commerce, Justice,
and State and several other independent agencies, as well as
the Federal judiciary. The Administration requested $848
million for 2000 census activities in FY99.
Administration activities: President Clinton will shine a
spotlight on the importance of an accurate census when he
visits Houston, Texas, tomorrow. The President will
participate in a roundtable discussion on key census issues
with local political and civic leaders.
Important administrative note: Census 2000 Initiative
project consultant TerriAnn Lowenthal has a new e-mail
address, effective immediately. You may now direct
questions to TerriAnn at <terriann2K(a)aol.com>. Also,
effective June 26, TerriAnn can be reached at a new work
number, 202/484-2270. We'll remind you of this change as
the date approaches.
Questions about the information contained in this News Alert
may be
directed to TerriAnn Lowenthal at (202) 434-8756 or, by
e-mail, at
<terriann2K(a)aol.com>. Please feel free to circulate this
information to
colleagues and other interested individuals.
Subject: Census 2000 News Alert
Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 12:04:21 -0400
From: Keri Monihan <kmonihan(a)ccmc.org>
May 22, 1998
NEWS ALERT
Subcommittee Hears Nearly Unanimous Support For Census 'Long Form' in
2000
Conservative Organizations Form Coalition To Prevent Sampling In Census
At an oversight hearing yesterday to review the proposed 'short' and
'long' questionnaires for the 2000 census, a parade of witnesses
representing a diverse range of stakeholders told legislators that
demographic and economic data collected in the census were vital to
support decisionmaking, planning, and resource allocation by local
governments, community-based service providers, and private business.
They noted that the $400 million cost of including a long form in the
census was a modest investment, given the nearly $200 billion in Federal
funds alone that are allocated each year to state and local governments
on the basis of census data. Supporters of the long form also suggested
that it was not responsible for the drop in census participation, since
the number of questions has been reduced over the past few decades while
response rates continued to fall.
The House Subcommittee on the Census heard testimony from Rep. Constance
Morella (R-MD), sponsor of legislation (H. Con. Res. 246) in support of
continuing the census long form in 2000; Rep. Charles Canady (R-FL),
sponsor of a bill (H.R. 2081) to require the collection of data on
family caregivers in the census; David Clawson, American Association of
State Transportation and Highway Organizations; Helen Samhan, Working
Group on Ancestry in the U.S. Census; James Hubbard, The American
Legion; David Crowe, representing the Coalition to Preserve Census Data,
a group of industry and business associations; Wen-Yen Chen, Formosan
Association for Public Affairs; and Marlo Lewis, Jr., Competitive
Enterprise Institute, a self-described public interest group that
promotes private voluntary alternatives to government programs and
regulations.
Only Mr. Lewis spoke against the continued collection of demographic and
socio-economic data in the census, saying that the long form contributes
to public distrust of government and that at a minimum, response should
be voluntary. Mr. Chen proposed that the race question include
Taiwanese as a separate category that respondents can check off. In
1990, the Census Bureau did not tabulate Taiwanese as a separate race,
citing concerns by the State Department that diplomatic relations with
China might be harmed. Respondents who received a long form could
indicate Taiwanese background on the ancestry question.
Subcommittee Chairman Dan Miller (R-FL) said: "There's no question that
we'll have a long form in 2000." He did not indicate whether he
supported the range of questions proposed by the Census Bureau or
maintaining the sample size of 17 percent (an average of one in six) of
housing units. The chairman said he intends to hold additional hearings
on the Census Bureau's proposal to eliminate the long form in 2010 by
implementing a continuous survey (known as the American Community
Survey, or ACS) throughout the decade to collect the same range of
information and produce annual estimates for every jurisdiction. The
panel's senior Democrat, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), held up a copy of
USA Today with all of the articles cut out that referenced data derived
directly or indirectly from the census long form. Most of the front
page was gone, as were several other articles and one editorial. Rep.
Vince Snowbarger (R-KS) asked several witnesses why local governments
couldn't do a better job at collecting data on their own communities.
Advocacy campaign against sampling: About a dozen organizations
generally associated with conservative causes announced the formation of
the Citizens for an Honest Count Coalition at a press conference on
Capitol Hill yesterday. Led by Grover Norquist, president of Americans
for Tax Reform (ATR), the organizations announced a grassroots campaign
to "save the 2000 Census from political manipulation by the Clinton
Administration" by preventing the use of sampling to conduct the count.
ATR also opposes continuation of the long form questionnaire.
Among the groups announcing their involvement in the effort were the
Washington Legal Foundation, the Law Enforcement Alliance of America
(LEAA), and the 60 Plus Association, which describes itself as a
conservative alternative to the American Association of Retired Persons
(AARP). 60 Plus said that sampling "will hurt senior citizens," who may
find themselves "subject to large tax increases [because] federal aid
[will] shift to the areas (e.g. urban areas) which were 'statistically
sampled'."
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on the
Census, said in a written statement that "a simple look at the
background of the groups involved shows that they all represent one,
partisan group: the Republican National Committee." She called the new
coalition a "farce" and "partisanship at its most damaging." Maloney
said that ATR received funds from the Republican National Committee
during the 1996 election campaign and the LEAA was founded with funds
from the National Rifle Association.
Appropriations update: Congress continues to proceed slowly on
legislation that will fund the Federal government in Fiscal Year 1999,
with the House falling well behind the usual schedule for budget and
funding bills. The Senate approved its version of a budget resolution
for FY99 in April and its appropriations panel has now set broad
spending levels for each of 13 budget categories. The Subcommittee on
Commerce, Justice, State and The Judiciary, which funds the Census
Bureau, received an allocation of $32.2 billion, about $1.2 billion (3.6
percent) below the President's request of $33.4 billion. The
subcommittee must now draft and approve a bill that divides the $32.2
billion among all of the agencies and programs under its jurisdiction,
ranging from weather programs to criminal justice activities to State
Department priorities to the census.
In the House this week, the Budget Committee cleared a FY99 budget
resolution that provides broad guidance to the appropriators on spending
and revenues. Congress is supposed to approve a budget resolution each
year by April 15 but often misses the legal deadline. The House
Appropriations Committee is poised to divvy up among its subcommittees
the $1.7 trillion that will be available for Federal programs in FY99,
even before the full House approves the tardy budget measure.
Committee roster change: Rep. Ron Lewis (R-KY) has been appointed to
take the place of Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) on the Subcommittee on the
Census, House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. Rep. Lewis
joined the full committee recently to fill a vacancy created by the
death of Rep. Steven Schiff (R-NM), who recently succumbed to cancer.
Stakeholder activities: The National Urban League, a member of the 2000
Census Advisory Committee, co-hosted a meeting with Census Bureau
officials on May 5 in New York City to discuss ways of promoting the
2000 census in the African American community. Urban League President
Hugh Price spoke to program participants, who also heard from Acting
Census Bureau Director James Holmes and New York Regional Director Tony
Farthing.
The Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. hosted a discussion about the
census at its annual policy conference on May 19 in Washington, D.C.
Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ), Census Bureau Associate Director for Field
Operations Marvin Raines, and Census 2000 Initiative project consultant
TerriAnn Lowenthal discussed ways that civic organizations can help
ensure an accurate census in 2000.
Worth reading: An article in the May/June 1998 issue of The
Sciences,gives a particularly comprehensive and clear picture of how the
census is taken, and the major issues involved in achieving an accurate
count. Please contact Henry Griggs at the Communications Consortium
Media Center (<hgriggs(a)ccmc.org>) is you cannot obtain a copy on your
own.
Coming soon to a web site near you! The Census 2000 Initiative is
nearing completion of its web site to keep census stakeholders informed
about key policy issues affecting the next count. The site will include
recent News Alerts, an archive of past News Alerts, fact sheets on key
issues, and links to stakeholder organizations involved in census
activities or issues. If your organization (nonpartisan) maintains a
web site with census-related information, please let us know. Watch for
details about the Initiative's site in future News Alerts.
Questions about the information contained in this News Alert may be
directed to TerriAnn Lowenthal at (202) 434-8756 or, by e-mail, at
<TerriAnnL(a)aol.com>. Please feel free to circulate this information to
colleagues and other interested individuals.
Iguana Incorporated would like to announce availability of a new white paper which is
called "TRANSPORTATION ANALYSIS IN THE INFORMATION AGE". The paper describes
issues and opportunities in tranportation planning and analysis related to the availability and
use of information technology such as the Internet and the World Wide Web. It provides an
informative summary of the impacts of such technology, and describes how Iguana software
enables the planner to take advantage of it. To view or download the paper click
<http://www.iguanaware.com/web_htm/res&proj/res02.htm> or visit our web site at the
address listed below. Live demonstrations of IguanaWebWorks will be available shortly using
a standard browser interface. Feedback is appreciated.
You can also view our first newsletter (February 1998) at
<http://www.iguanaware.com/web_htm/news&press/feb27-98.pdf>. The newsletter is in PDF
format, which requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader for viewing and printing. Acrobat Reader is
available for free at <http://www.adobe.com/>.
Edward F. Granzow
Iguana Incorporated
ph - (916) 546-3113
fax - (916) 546-3119
email - <mailto:efgranzow@iguanaware.com>
web - <http://www.iguanaware.com/>
Chuck--
I saw Pat Hu last week and she knows Tommy Wright. She had copies of the
article and gave me one. I can certainly make it available if someone
wants it. I can slip you one in Portland and bring some for Seattle. I
think the article is a must read for anyone who is interested in
understanding the mechanical concepts behind "ratio estimation" with a
"dual-system estimation" process. It is the kind of article that will be
kept inside my textbooks dealing with survey design. And well worth a
read---just don't ask me to re-explain the techniques. <g>
Thanks for putting us on the scent of the article.
ed christopher
Chuck Purvis (MTC) wrote:
> Dear CTPP-Newsers:
>
> I came across this reference to an article on "Sampling and Census
> 2000: The Concepts" published by the "American Scientist" magazine.
> Unfortunately, a full text of this article is not provided. The
> article is by Dr. Tommy Wright of the Census Bureau. An abstract, and
> a discussion forum, is at:
>
> http://www.amsci.org/amsci/articles/98articles/wright.html
>
> If anybody can find a copy of this journal, a few of us might be
> interested in reading it. (Or maybe we could get a copy from Dr.
> Wright?)
>
> Chuck Purvis
> *******************************************************
> e-mail: cpurvi(a)mtc.dst.ca.us *or* cpurvi(a)mtc.ca.gov
> or cpurvis(a)mtc.dst.ca.us *or* cpurvis(a)mtc.ca.gov
> Chuck Purvis, AICP
> Senior Transportation Planner/Analyst, Planning Section
> Metropolitan Transportation Commission
> 101 Eighth Street, Oakland, CA 94607-4700
> (510) 464-7731 (voice) (510) 464-7848 (fax)
> WWW: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/ (New Address: FEB1398)
> MTC DataMart & InfoMart:
> http://www.mtc.ca.gov/facts_and_figures/datamart.htm
> MTC FTP Site: ftp://ftp.abag.ca.gov/pub/mtc/planning/
> Personal WWW: http://home.earthlink.net/~clpurvis/
> *******************************************************